Spineless Porcupine
by Angel Walking
Summary: Shinji seems spineless, but Kaoru made him even more spineless when he betrayed and broke him. This starts episode 24, but has no Kaoru - how different would it be? Slight A/S pairing


Sometimes you just sit back and let everything fall into the dust from whence it came. I was never able to do that; once something took another shape upon itself, it was that and not the previous state of matter at all - more like the offspring of it. We are from dust and God, but we are niether of the two, though more the former than the latter. So we are their children, as could be claimed of it all.   
  
I am not ready to be dust. Are you? Unto the dust from whence we came... I don't think I shall ever understand why all must suffer from such a sin. Perhaps God knew that we all would, put in the same place, show such a betrayal as to eat that which was forbidden, or perhaps He is taking out His anger on us all with the occasional prophet or guide to remind us of His presence. That image of God is more like a man than the God most choose to believe in. Man is more likely to be hurt and punish, as opposed to love and guide traitors through a world that's only bad because of wicked, wicked Satan.  
  
___________________________  
  
Shinji lay cradled in rough, terry-cloth sheets, feeling the scratch of the second-hand apholstry through the slightly smelly covering. The door creaked wearily as Misato slid into the room, staggering suspiciously, reeking of too much beer. Coldly, the defeated boy wondered whether it was just the alcohol behind her guilty concern.  
  
"Shinji-kun..." The clumsey female reached towards the precious pilot, and watched as he flinched pointedly from her hand.  
  
"Go away...."  
  
The hedgehog's dillema. Untouchable... Shinji was beyond untouchable. Every corner of his soul was folded carefully inside thick walls that no human could ever pass. Too much hurt... everything was too painful, either for him or those close to him, acting in a cruel circle and hurting him as well.  
  
"Baka!" Storming out, Misato refused to face the Rei-like face of her charge. Finding Pen-Pen, she curled around the understanding creature, consoling her drunken self as best she could.  
  
Softly, the track whirred back on repeat to the beginning of song 26, and Shinji felt nothing as the music enveloped him into the void within.  
  
___________________________  
  
Shinji barely remembered to snatch the apartment key as he dashed out of Misato's apartment, away from the bleak feeling infested within the structure. Living with another as broken down as himself, watching her trying pathetically to care for the two of them... No, he couldn't stand another moment of Misato's failures.   
  
Wandering almost aimlessly, he crossed each street carelessly, daring the busses and cars to hit the third child. Scuffing shoes down against the tired concrete, he turned away from the denser center of Tokyo Three. Faster now,he let the pavement blur into one, pointed direction - OUT. Each block brought him houses more in need of repair, darker allyways, and less people.   
  
For a moment, it felt as though he was finally able to breathe again after being suffocated, having been previously over his head in an uncomprehensible technological muddle. Perhaps people looked more 'shady', or like their intentions were nothing more than to smear him across the wall if it served their purposes, but at least there wasn't all of THEM. The nerds, the rich people, the depressed ones, the hopefull ones, and the oblivious ones who had had the luck to live in one of the few surviving cities of Japan - that was THEM. Here, it was like a replay of the decades before the mayhem of angels - the place held valiantly to the same, dark, unwanted image, shaded out by the greater populace of skyscrapers located nearby. Maybe it wasn't beautiful, spiffy, and up-to-date, but these days, ignorance was the greatest bliss achievable, and this neighborhood clung to it.   
  
On the outskirts of the thinning clusters of shacks, the real ruins began. Water sported remains of a great civilization. Metal frames from buildings before the second impact jutted out, and milk cartons and refrigerator handles floated in the murk. Shinji picked up a shard of some old tile or pottery piece before tossing it carelessly into the swampy ocean before him among the rest of the debris. 


End file.
